WordPress or Astro for a small business site in 2026
For a small Bristol business with eight to twenty pages and no shop, a static site built on Astro is cheaper to own, faster and far less likely to break. WordPress still wins in two specific cases, and we will say which.
Key takeaways
- Astro sites cost almost nothing to host and have no plugins to patch.
- WordPress wins if you need complex e-commerce or a membership area.
- Editing is the real question: both are fine, but the workflows are different.
- Total cost of ownership over three years usually favours static by a wide margin.
Side by side
| WordPress | Astro static | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical hosting | £15 to £40 a month | Free to £3 a month |
| Mobile load time | 3 to 7 seconds | 1 to 1.5 seconds |
| Security patching | Monthly, ongoing | None required |
| Plugin licences | £100 to £400 a year | None |
| Editing text and images | In the admin area | In the admin area or a simple editor |
| Complex e-commerce | Strong | Weak |
| Risk of breaking on update | Real and recurring | Effectively nil |
When WordPress is the right answer
Two cases, in our experience. If you sell more than a handful of products with variants, stock and shipping rules, WooCommerce is a genuinely good system and rebuilding that on a static stack is false economy. And if you already have a team who know WordPress well and a site that is fast and patched, there is no argument for change; the migration cost buys nothing.
When static wins
A service business with eight to twenty pages, a contact form, a blog and no shop. That describes most of the businesses SEO Bristol works with. The site is faster, cannot be hacked through a plugin, costs nothing to host, and in year three it is exactly as fast as it was on launch day, which is not true of any WordPress site we have ever audited.
The catch is editing. You are not getting the WordPress admin area, and if your team edits pages daily that matters. For most service businesses editing a handful of pages a month, a simple editor connected to the site is enough, and we set that up at handover.
Questions people ask
Can I move away from you later?
Yes. The code sits in your repository, the hosting is in your Netlify account and the domain is in your registrar account. That is deliberate.
What about a blog?
Static handles blogs well. Every article on this site is one.
Will Google care which one I use?
Not directly. It cares about speed, structure and content, and static makes the first two easier.
We build on Astro and hand over everything. From £99 a month, in your own accounts, from a Bristol SEO agency that owns nothing of yours.
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